While many would suggest winter is
Scotland’s best hillwalking season, my preference would be spring or
autumn.
The promise of spring tends to be
in your heart, uplifted by the thought of the summer ahead, but the
beauty of
autumn is more immediate and on a
good day lies all around you in golden splendour.
Stob Coire Sgriodain (976m/3,202ft)
and Chno Dearg (1,047m/3435ft), the two Fersit hills beyond Loch Treig,
certainly make a marvellous early
winter round.
The circuit of the pair also makes a fairly easy day out,
although many
Munrobaggers are happy to lengthen
it by adding nearby Beinn na Lap. While it’s great to get the extra
Munro
it does add a big descent from the
subsidiary top of Meall Garbh. That’s followed by a long climb of nearly
500m to the summit of Beinn na Lap
before turning round and repeating it all over again. Alternatively,
you could
drop down to Corrour station from
Beinn na Lap and return to Tulloch by train.
I first visited Fersit many years
ago with Hamish Brown. We had planned a day on the tops but dreadful
weather forced us into low-level
sloth. We thought that afternoon tea with the late Nancy Smith at Fersit
would round off a pleasant, if wet
and windy, day but Nancy wasn’t in, although a note pinned to the door
invited visitors to come in and
make themselves at home.
Fersit, in those days, was one of Scotland’s
early private hostels, a role model for
those to come.
Today the bunkhouse at nearby Tulloch is altogether
grander, but equally welcoming.
The roadend
at Fersit is the logical starting point for the round of Stob Coire Sgriodain.
Once past the last
of the houses, the track gives way to rough pastures which in turn run
into
the lower slopes of Coire an
Lochain. Several burnsitumble downhill from the corrie and you can
follow any of
them because they all eventually
form one stream, the Allt Chaorach Beag, that begins its life high
below the crags
of Sron na Garbh-bheinne in Lochan
Coire an Lochain.
The first time l climbed these Munros everything was
covered in
snow and the steep, craggy face of
Sron na Garbh-bheinne looked fairly intimidating. Instead I opted to
bypass
the crags and tackle what I thought
would be the easier eastern slopes of the ridge. I eventually found a
wide,
snow-filled gullv and even today I
can nervously recall the trepidation I experienced as the slope got
steeper
and steeper. When I eventually
reached the relative safety of the ridge the exhilaration I felt was
made even
sweeter by relief but the
sustaining and most rewarding emotion was even greater — a sense of
privilege at being
part of that magnificent scene.
Beyond Sron na Garbh-bheinne the ridge led me to the summit of Stob Coire Sgriodain where the
views beyond the head of Loch Treig were simply breathtaking.
There lay
the great, rolling mattress of Rannoch
Moor, a vast and desolate place protected on all sides by uprearing mountains.
On that day it was as
though perfection had been defined in mountain splendour. I wandered round the rest of the route on a
cloud of high fulfilment.
The ridge dropped down to a high bealach and then straggled in a
south-east direction to Sgriodain’s I south top. A series of bumps and
knolls rolled on southeast, over a
double top and down to another wide bealach where, in summer, there is a scattering of shallow lochans.
This
all sounds rather confusing but on a clear day the route is quite
obvious. In mist it can be tricky.
From Meall Garbh
it’s an easy climb to the dome-like summit of Chno Dearg where the open slopes of
Coire an Lochain herald the long descent to Fersit and home.
ROUTE
PLANNER
Map: OS 1:50,000 Landranger sheet 41 ( Ben Nevis ); Harveys Superwalker
( Ben Nevis ) Distance: About 8 miles/ 13km Approx Time: 6/7 hours Start/Finish: Fersit (GR: NN350783)
Route:
Take the track east from Fersit then follow rough pastures via
various sheep fanks to the south.
Climb open slopes then craggy ridge to Sron na Garbh-bheinne.
Follow ridge to Stob
Coire Sgriodain.
Descend south to bealach
and then SE to S top of Sgriodain.
Cross more open ground in an ESE direction
over a double top and down to another
bealach.
Climb Meall Garbh.
Follow ridge NE
to Chno Dearg.
Descend easy slopes NNW to track back to Fersit.
